Notwithstanding the uses of adversity, it is astonishing how well
prosperity _agrees_ with some people. It has much the same sort of
effect on them that the sun has on fruit and flowers. All the graces
within them which have been invisible while the rough winds of adversity
blew, now blossom, and show sweet bits of colour, and little tender,
gracious perfumes, which no one would have supposed consistent with such
hard, crabbed, in short disagreeable products of nature.
Silas Lynn had all through his life, up to the present day, been visited
by the harsh winds of adversity.
It is true they had not come to him in the form of poverty. He was too
prudent, too hard-working for poverty to have anything to do with him.
But a man can suffer adversity without being poor, and Silas's life from
his cradle up to the present had been a hard one.
Pleasure and he had kept at a distance. The relaxations of existence
had never been permitted to him. In short, his life had been all
lessons and no play.
Silas was aware of this fact himself, but up to the present he had
looked upon it as a good and healthy sign of his soul's state. His
mother had taught him that chastening is the lot of the Christian.
"Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth," she had said to him so many
times, that he whispered it to himself with white lips and a haggard
look on his strong face as he bent over her in her coffin.
When his fruit crop failed, and his flowers yielded but poor blooms, he
repeated the old text again under his breath, and took comfort from it.
It was a great surprise, therefore, to Silas, when suddenly the old
aspect of things altered, and the Lord whom he sincerely loved ceased to
chasten. Life was so completely changed to Silas that he scarcely knew
himself.
He was going to be married. There was nothing remarkable in the fact in
itself--more than one middle-aged woman of the Wesleyan community in his
own village would gladly have come to keep house for him. She would, as
the expression goes, "make him and mend him." She would cook for him,
and keep his place clean, and spend his money, and be the mother of his
children, whom she would bring up in the fear of the Lord.
Silas could have married Eliza Sparkes, or Mary Ann Hatton, or Hannah
Martin, and he would have received the congratulations of his friends,
and the sincerest good wishes from all quarters, and yet not have been
able consciously to say in his heart, "The Lord has ceased to chasten."
But he was not going to marry a middle-aged woman from the village. He
was middle-aged himself, no doubt, nearly forty, but the bride who was
soon coming to gladden the old cottage, and vie with the flowers in her
beauty, was scarcely more than a child in years.
This wilful, pretty, dainty blossom which he had culled out of the
London streets was just the very last wife any one would have expected
him to take. She would not be to the taste of the Wesleyans, and he
felt that the congratulations and "God speed you" from his friends would
be few.
But what mattered these things, when his own heart was singing a psalm
of thanksgiving from morning till night, when the flowers in his garden
were absolutely riotous in the profusion of their blossoms, when the sun
smiled on him, and the dews came at night to refresh him? What did he
care for the neighbours, whether they were pleased or not?
During the first fortnight of his engagement to Jill, his own nature
took a sudden late blossoming. His gruff voice became a shade lower and
more refined in tone, and even Jonathan, his hard-working factotum,
ceased to fear Silas.
Master and man were very busy, putting the tiny cottage in order, for
the wedding was to be in another week.
On a certain Saturday evening, as Silas was standing in the middle of
his flower-beds, contemplating a late crop of enormous carnations, and
considering how many boxes he could fill with cut blooms for his
Monday's market, he heard the click of the gate at the far end of the
garden path, and saw an elderly woman in a poke bonnet and long cloak
advancing to meet him.
"Giminy! ef it ain't Aunt Hannah!" he muttered under his breath, "Now,
whatever's bringing her bothering round?"
He walked down the path as he spoke, and held out his big hand to his
relation.
"Wot's this I hear, Silas?" said his aunt; "that you're going to,
contract marriage with an unbeliever?"
The little woman had an anxious, wizened face. It was raised now with a
world of commiseration in it to Silas.
The man felt so happy that he absolutely smiled down at the audacious
little intruder.
"That's all you know," he began.
"Oh, don't I know, Silas! Wot would yer pore mother say ef she were to
come alive again, and see this bitter day? Oh, Silas! you that has been
brought up on the Bible--han't you read your Scripter to some purpose?
`Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain.' Oh, Silas! Silas! it's Mary
Ann Hatton, or one of them other sober women you ought to be taking to
wife."
"Yes," said Silas, "and wouldn't both on us have been as cross as two
sticks? I'm taking a bonny bit of a gel to wed, wot's sweet as a rose
to look at, and with a perfume o' the lavender and the cherry-pie about
her. Good inside and out is Jill, and I guess ef Solomon were alive,
he'd say as the price of a gel like Jill were above rubies."
"I heerd tell," said Aunt Hannah, in a slow voice, "that you was quite
gone off yer head, Silas, my man, but I didn't go to believe it, until I
had clapped my own two eyes on yer. I'm mournful, thinkin' on yer pore
mother. But there's no manner of use in wasting words on a man wot's
gone silly, so I'll wish yer a werry good-evening."
"You stay a bit," said Silas. "Jonathan and me, we are doing up the
cottage, and you had ever a cute eye for a good bit of furniture. Come
and see what I am doing. I doubt ef you'd know the place."
With many sighs and groans, Aunt Hannah was induced to enter the
cottage. She behaved in a melancholy way when she got inside, for the
sight of her sister's vacant chair provoked a sudden flood of tears,
which embarrassed and annoyed Silas.
"Eh dear, eh dear," she sobbed, "to think of the last time I ha' seen
pore Maria a-bolstered up in that cheer. She had the asthmey awful, and
she said to me, `Hannah, it ketches me most when I lies down.' She said
them words over and over, and I don't think I ever heerd anything more
mournful. Eh, and ef that ain't the lavender I see'd her put in with
her own hands into that identical muslin bag, my name ain't Hannah
Royal! Oh, Silas! it's wonderful how you can go agin a mother like
that!"
"I ain't a-going agin her," said Silas; "you shet up now, Aunt Hannah,
you has said enough. Wot do you think of this table and chair as I has
bought? And this rug to put in front of the stove? Come now, give us
your opinion; it's worth having."
Thus appealed to Aunt Hannah immediately wiped her tears, and going down
on her knees began to feel the texture of the rug, and to put it up to
her nose, and to sniff at it, and then hold it between herself and the
light.
"I misdoubt me that it ain't made with three threads across," she said,
laying it down with some contempt. "And the colour's too flashy for my
taste. I like a drab ground, with a teeny sprig of purple on it. Let
me look at that 'ere table. You don't mean to tell me, Silas, as you
has gone and bought a _meehogany_ table? Don't yer know as sech a table
is sinful waste to a man in your station?"
"It were goin' dirt cheap," said Silas, in an apologetic tone.
"I misdoubt me that it's worm-eat," said Aunt Hannah. "And as to this
cheer, its creak would turn a body silly. Well, is there anything else
for me to see?"
"There's a crate in that corner, full of cups and saucers, and plates
and dishes."
"Chaney?" said Aunt Hannah, "I'm a jedge of that. I'll unpack the crate
ef you wish, Silas."
"Well, do," said Silas, "I'll be obleeged. I can manage flowers, but I
'ates touching chaney. It seems to slip out of yer fingers, however
careful you air. You unpack the crate, missis, and we'll have a cup of
tea together."
Silas proceeded to light the fire, and put the kettle on to boil, and
Aunt Hannah unpacked the crate which contained the cups and saucers, and
plates, and dishes, with which Jill was to help to furnish her new home.
If there were one thing more than another for which Mrs Royal had a
truly worldly affection, it was for "chaney." She was a good judge of
all house furniture, but with regard to "chaney" she felt herself a
specialist. She was as knowing on this point as Silas was with regard
to the best blooms and the choicest cuttings. The task, therefore, to
which she now set herself was quite to her mind.
Silas had not dared to choose the tea-service and the plates and dishes
himself--he had asked a friend of his to buy them for him, and to have
them sent down to the cottage. When Aunt Hannah, therefore, removed the
paper wrapper from a delicate cup of white and gilt, with a blue
convolvulus lying across the saucer, and sending its delicate tendrils
round the cup, he came and gazed at the lovely specimens with a certain
quickening of his pulses, and a queer inclination in his eyes to water.
"I say!" he exclaimed, "I never thought as chaney would look like that."
"It's most onsuitable," said Aunt Hannah. "But I don't deny as it's
neat. My word, I only hope as that gel will have deft fingers, or
she'll be crackin' and splittin' this yere fragile chaney. You don't
mean to say, Silas, as you'll use it hevery day? You are sinnin a'most
past knowin' you, but I don't s'pose as you'll go the awful depths of
using this yere chaney hevery day."
"That must be as Jill pleases," said Silas.
"Giminy! I never did know as chaney could look like this, it seems to
add a fresh pleasure to life--why, it a'most beats the flowers."
"I won't deny that it ain't a werry neat pattern," said Aunt Hannah,
"the twist of convolvuly is werry cunnin', but chaney like that is meant
to lock up in a cupboard; there ain't no one as 'ud use it daily."
"Look here," said Silas, "there's a power of cups and saucers ain't
there, Aunt Hannah?"
"My word, yes," said Aunt Hannah, "a whole, dozen, and plates to match,
and four fruit dishes, and a couple of cake plates, and a slop-bowl and
a teapot, and a cream jug and sugar basin--it's the most complete thing
I iver seed."
"Well, then, look yere," said Silas, "s'pose as we has a tea-drinkin'
out o' it."
"Silas!" Aunt Hannah dropped her lower jaw and her small eyes grew
beady bright in their glance.
"S'pose," continued Silas, "we had a tea-drinkin' out of it, and we
asked Jill down, and one or two o' the neighbours to meet her, and you
come and spend the night here, Aunt Hannah, and you ondertake the
tea-drinkin'--s'pose now you do that, eh?"
"Well," said Aunt Hannah, "it seems like encouraging of you, Silas, in
your mad folly."
"Not a bit on it," said Lynn, "for whether you come or whether you go,
Jill and me we'll be married at the church in the village come next
Thursday. You can please yerself, Aunt Hannah, but I thought as _we_
might have our tea-drinkin' on Tuesday, and you'd see with your own
eyes, and the neighbours 'ud see, what sort of a little gel were coming
home to me to cheer up my life."
"Well," said Aunt Hannah, "I don't go fer to deny that there's something
in your idee, Silas. I own as I'd like to say a word to that gel on the
subject of chaney like this. Ef I found her teachable and humble in her
notions, I don't _promise_, mind, but I _might_ give her three cracked
delf cups of my own--white they was once, but they has turned yeller--
she could use 'em for common and keep this chaney for best, for
christenings, and sech-like, and the delf cups 'ud be a very suitable
present from your aunt to her, Silas."
"You can do that as you please," said Silas. "Air we to have the
tea-drinkin', or air we not, Aunt Hannah?"
"I think, hall things considerin', that it 'ud be right to have it,"
said Aunt Hannah, in a solemn voice. "In a matter o' this sort it's
right to consider the waluables, and this chaney is altogether out of
the common. The first thing to be done is to scald it, and that I'll
manage for yer on Monday morning, Silas, for I'll bring over my own
wooden pail, and gradually heat each cup and each saucer in hot water,
until it'll bear the heat when it comes to the bile. It's wonderful
careless of gels in these days, they'll crack the finest chaney for not
knowing how properly to scald it afore usin'."
"That's settled then," said Silas. "I'll speak to Jill to-morrow, and
we'll ask Mr Hibberty Jones and his wife, and Mary Ann Hatton to come
to tea, and ef Mr Peters 'ud honour us as well we'd be proud to see
him. You'll see to the victuals, won't you, Aunt Hannah?"
"Yes, you leave that to me," said Aunt Hannah. "That girl 'ull eat a
cake worth eating for the first time in _her_ life--and now I must be
goin' 'ome."